Trevor Powers on his isolated writing process, the reason his new record is called Wondrous Bughouse, and the man who taught him all about percussion: Diddy.

Even if you never heard a single note of the intensely personal songs from Trevor Powers' debut album as Youth Lagoon, the story of its creation did more than enough to frame him as a consummate loner. First, there was the title: The Year of Hibernation. And the record was written, and originally released and performed live entirely by Powers himself. While that's a fairly common DIY approach as of late, the fact that he was from Boise, Idaho, amplified the sense of isolation.

When I catch Powers on a Sunday afternoon to talk about his upcoming sophomore record Wondrous Bughouse, he isn't doing much to counter that image. It's about 3 p.m. and he's at a local bar having a drink while most of the patrons are in another room, focused on the TV. The crowd is cheering on the closest thing they've got to a professional "home team," the Seattle Seahawks, but Powers is not invested in the outcome. He's talking to me about writing the new album alone in his house in the small hours, "taking breaks to walk or smoke-- my neighbors probably thought I was crazy because I'd always be walking down the street with a glass of wine, just thinking about lyrics." Still, it's not all empty barstools and cloistered songwriting for the frontman-- Powers feels at ease with himself and his surroundings and has no plans to leave Boise. "It's so small that everyone becomes friends instantly," he says.

The ideals of manageable extroversion and personal connection translate to the making of the new record: While Powers wrote the album in Boise, he took advantage of the success afforded by his debut and recorded in Georgia with go-to indie producer Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Deerhunter) and a local pickup band. The six-minute first single "Dropla" is a good example of Powers' expansive new vision for Youth Lagoon, as is his new four-piece touring band... which will undoubtedly come in handy when the group open for the National at Brooklyn's 19,000-capacity Barclays Center this June. In the meantime, Powers shared his experience about being a delegator for the first time, the influence of Bad Boy Records on Wondrous Bughouse, and how to make quiet music an "event."

"During the recording of the album, I had this anxiety of thinking I was going to die-- it was super overwhelming."

Pitchfork: Judging from the song titles on the record, like "Daisyphobia", "Attic Doctor", "Mute", and "Sleep Paralysis", a lot of it seems to be about either death or frailty of the body.

Trevor Powers: Definitely. "Dropla", for instance, is about the idea of watching someone close to you pass away. We never think that kind of stuff happens; we just kind of live in disillusion.

Pitchfork: Are those songs more about your own worries about mortality or seeing what's going on around you?

TP: Even with the name Wondrous Bughouse-- the "bughouse" is an old term that refers to an insane asylum, so the title is just welcoming the beauty of the idea of being conscious of our mortality. I really got consumed with the idea of how people who are deemed crazy or insane often have a firmer grasp on reality than normal people. The average person goes through life thinking it will go on forever. We say to ourselves we won't live forever, but I don't think that thought ever really sinks in until the day comes. A lot of it is me being scared that one day I'll die, just realizing that. Even during the recording of the album I had this anxiety of thinking I was going to die for some reason. I kept trying to push it off but it kept coming back. It was super overwhelming.

Pitchfork: Listening to the new songs, one thing I noticed immediately that carried over from Hibernation is how the tracks really open up at a high volume. Is it a conscious decision for you to make records that sound better loud despite their hermetic nature?

TP: It's mainly because music is often put off as a background thing nowadays. So the whole concept of having something really in-your-face that you're forced to listen to is beautiful because I think music should be an event and not something that's just dismissed.

Pitchfork: Who are your inspirations in terms of people that make confrontational music that isn't considered typically loud or abrasive?

TP: When I first started writing this record, I started listening to a lot of This Heat's Repeat-- it's so drawn out that a lot of people would just dismiss it as background music, but for me it had this whole otherworldliness to it. As far as music being something that's not background, it doesn't mean that it's loud, it means that it's instantly something to dwell on and process and swallow and regurgitate. I've always been a big fan of Brian Eno and Harold Budd, too.

Pitchfork: Do you think being from a place such as Boise as opposed to Brooklyn or Los Angeles leads to the possibility that music is seen as more of an important social experience because of its rarity?

TP: Yeah. When friends and I go to shows around here, everyone goes for a purpose rather than just going to hang out. In a lot of cities there's music so often that none of it really sinks in, which takes the whole event factor out of it. When bands come to Boise, you really want to listen to them.

"A lot of Puff Daddy stuff really influenced me growing up."

Pitchfork: How did you connect with producer Ben Allen?

TP: Ben and I started talking on the phone when I was midway through writing the record. I was initially attracted to working with him because of all the stuff he did with Bad Boy and his hip-hop influence [Allen engineered several Bad Boy releases in the late 90s]. I knew he had a huge background in that stuff and I wanted the percussion on the new tracks to be a lot different.

So I showed up in Georgia and told Ben everything that I wanted, just communicating my vision the whole way. He knew a drummer that lived two blocks away and worked at a coffee shop, so he came in and I told him what I wanted him to do. There are even some cellos on the record, so I talked to Ben about what I wanted as far as all that goes. I have this notebook where I write down where I want things to come in, with arrows pointing to things.

Pitchfork: How much does hip-hop influence what you do?

TP: A lot of Puff Daddy stuff really influenced me growing up. I know it sounds weird, but as far as percussion and bass goes, the low end is always super important to me. So having someone that knew what they were doing in that aspect was vital.

Pitchfork: With Year of Hibernation, a lot of the songs would start out very quietly and morph into a big climax. Did you consciously think to write songs with different kinds of builds on the new record?

TP: No, none of it was conscious. If I feel like I'm writing from an agenda, that's when I throw something away. If I have a strategy I feel like I'm doing it for the wrong reasons.